Mountain Town News: Why aren’t more people hunting powder?

Why don’t more people want to play in the snow?
It’s a very different time for the ski industry than when Grand Targhee opened for business in late 1969. Baby boomers were coming of age and America was increasingly prosperous. Innovations had made skiing accessible to the merely athletic and not the truly adventurous. And, not least, wide-bodied jets had made long-distance travel possible.

Skiing was booming then. Grand Targhee, located on the western side of the Teton Range near Driggs, Idaho, was one of 97 ski areas in the United States founded during the 1960s, according to a compilation of founding years conducted by the International Skiing History Association. Others included Breckenridge and Keystone, Park City and Crested Butte, Ski Apache in New Mexico, and Schweitzer in Idaho. Plus Jackson Hole, in Wyoming.

The pace has slowed to 23 new ski areas in the 1980s and just 8 in the century’s last decade. There were still significant acreage expansions at ski areas. Vail basically doubled in size during the late 1980s and 1990s, for example. But the best mountains had been taken.

Skier days began flattening. In 1978-79, national skier days were at 50.2 million (not counting Pacific coastal states). The highest they’ve reached since then was 60.5 million. Last year, a drought year in Colorado and other states, they fell back to 53.3 million.

Participation, however, has not kept up with population growth. For more than 15 years, the ski industry has been pondering how to pick up the pace. That dilemma was discussed again recently when Mike Kaplan, chief executive of the Aspen Skiing Co., met with local elected officials.

Kaplan described a “flat skier-visit environment” for the industry. The four ski areas in the Aspen area did about 500,000 skier days in 1967-78, the year that Snowmass opened. By 1993 it was doing 1.4 million skier days. Since then, that number has changed little except for a dip during the recession of a decade ago.

The critical problem he identified at a meeting covered by The Aspen Times’ Scott Condon is that ski areas remain heavily dependent upon the same folks who produced the big gains in the 1960s and 1970s, baby boomers who, by the way, are overwhelmingly white guys.

Baby boomers have been aging out. They were responsible for 31.1 percent of skier visits nationwide in 2005-2006, notes Condon. That had dripped to 14.8 percent last season, despite the offer of discounted tickets to older skiers.

Older skiers are valuable to the ski industry because they tend to have the time and money to spend more time on the slopes: 9.1 days for those 65 years of age and older. That’s the highest of any age cohort other than those 17 and younger.

Too, there’s more competition, as was observed by Kaplan and others, including cruises, beach getaways, and trips to Las Vegas.

A youth movement is occurring, Adrienne Saia Isaac, marketing and communications director for the National Ski Areas Association, told the Times. Generation Z, ages 21 and younger, comprised 34 percent of skier visits last season, the largest age group. Gen Xers (aged 38 to 53) and millennials (ages 22 to 37) have been “holding steady” in skier visits, she said. However, they ski and ride less than prior generations.

For at least 15 years the ski industry has been confounded by the rapid drop-out rate of beginners. Only 19 percent continue on to become proficient and long-term customers. “There have been a number of successful innovations that would make a difference if more widely adopted,” says Rick Kahl, editor of Ski Area Management, an industry publication. Too often, though, ski schools reject those changes and marketing departments resist spending the necessary money.

Of course, ski towns aren’t withering away. There are no boarded-up windows, common in small farming towns. Ski towns, nearly all of them, have the problems of success, such as affordable housing. And, then there’s Vail Resorts, whose stock has gained appreciably in the last 22 years, a reflection of the company’s profitability. Now, Alterra Mountain Co. wants to get in on the action.

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Most rental cars at airport not well-equipped for snow
BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. – The Summit Daily News recently set out to find out what visitors, setting out from Denver International Airport, would find in rental vehicles for a trip to Colorado mountain resorts.

The results? Something less than comforting. Of the six car-rental firms, only one said it could guarantee a four-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicle. True, the vast majority of their SUVs and pickup trucks come equipped with all-wheel or four-wheel-drive capability. But no guarantees. And snow tires? Forget about it.

In other words, many of the vehicles driven by out-of-state visitors to Colorado mountain resorts do not meet the state’s requirements for driving in inclement weather.

It used to be called the chain-law. But most rental car companies prohibit use of chains. too. One company represented told the Summit Daily that this rule stems from fear that chains could damage the vehicles or because many people don’t know how to properly install chains.

Of course, how many ski towns residents know how to use chains anymore? In the good old days—say the 1970s and 1980s— they used to be part of the essential tool kit.

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Holy Cross takes a big step toward 70 percent renewables
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – Just like that, Holy Cross Energy has taken a giant step toward its pledge to achieve 70 percent carbon-free electricity to members in the Vail and Aspen areas.

The Glenwood Springs-based cooperative announced a two-way power purchase agreement that will enable development of a new 100-megawatt wind farm.

This new wind power will allow Holy Cross to hit its goal of 70 percent renewable energy by 2021. That is nine years earlier than was promised in the pledge announced in September.

Holy Cross’s new partner is Denver-based Guzman Energy, a wholesale power provider. Guzman two years ago partnered with Kit Carson Electric with the goal of developing solar resources to push that co-operative based in Taos, N.M., toward 100 percent renewables.

However, the new agreement also sees coal playing a role in the power mix for the foreseeable future. Holy Cross has a partial ownership of a coal-fired power plant at Pueblo, Colo., and Guzman will use output from that power to supply both its New Mexico and Colorado customers.

Vail Resorts launched the new digital assistance service at Keystone earlier this season and now has added Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Park City, Whistler Blackcomb, Heavenly, Northstar and Tahoe.

The system, explains Whistler’s Pique, uses artificial-intelligence technology and natural language processing to answer questions. To pose one, users are asked to send a text message. They will get a response or be directed to a “live agent” via text.

“Right now, Emma’s just a baby, and these are baby steps,” explained Marc Riddell, communications director for Whistler Blackcomb, “but eventually… it’s going to be able to answer guest questions about the resort, about their vacation, about lifts, things to purchase – all that sort of stuff.”

Others questions Emma will be equipped to answer, says Pique, is how long the wait is at the gondola. And where can you smoke a joint at Whistler?

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Foundations assist federal agencies in Jackson Hole
JACKSON, Wyo. – Teton County consists of 97 percent public lands, nearly all of them administered by the U.S. government. How does the U.S. government shutdown affect the county?

The Jackson Hole News&Guide in early January described minimal impact. That’s largely because Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks don’t draw that many visitors in winter, due to the snow. .

“There’s not a lot of formalized activity in winter,” said Mark Berry, vice president of the Grand Teton National Park Foundation. The foundation is not a formal agency of the federal government, but rather a non-profit formed to assist, as needed.

This is a time when the park needs assistance, even if the number of users is small. The foundation has secured portable toilets for placement at popular trailheads, to avoid the sort of messes reported in Yosemite and other places.

The Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center has also been relying on non-profit funds to squeak by during the shutdown. Its forecasters are deemed ‘essential,’ which means they are part of about 420,000 federal employees forced to work without pay.

Backcountry users will still be able to check the Avalanche Center’s daily bullets, but operations may be hampered as time goes on, said Bob Comey, the director.

That’s where another non-profit, the Friends of Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center, will come in. It will cover incidental operating costs that cannot be deferred until funding resumes – assuming that the shutdown does not last for years, as President Donald Trump vowed will happen unless he gets funding from Congress to build his wall on the Mexican border.

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Colorado’s first avalanche victim was in avalanche class
OURAY, Colo. – Senator Beck Basin lies above Red Mountain Pass and mostly above treeline in the San Juan Mountains. Study of the dust-on-snow phenomenon began there in about 2005.

Last Saturday it became the site of Colorado’s first avalanche fatality. The Colorado Sun reported that the victim, a 40-year-old skier from the Front Range, had been participating in the Silverton Avalanche School’s three-day, Level 2 avalanche class. He was swept down a slope along with five other students and buried under eight feet of snow.

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